Drugs in Colombia

The weedkiller war

A big new effort to repress the cocaine industry

LAST year, some 35,000 peasant farmers in the Colombian department of Putumayo, the world's largest single source of cocaine, signed pacts agreeing to pull up their coca bushes within 12 months in return for government aid. Thousands complied; many more did not—not least because aid was slow to arrive. Now Colombia's new government, supported by the United States, is all but scrapping this policy of voluntary eradication in favour of a big new push to spray coca fields with herbicide. After a decade in which coca production steadily rose in Colombia, American officials say that this year they will finally start to get on top of it.

Alvaro Uribe, who took office as Colombia's president a month ago, has made containing the country's guerrillas his top priority. The United States Congress recently approved an administration request to allow American military aid, previously targeted against the drug trade, to be used against the insurgents. But officials from both countries insist that fighting drugs is an integral part of tackling the illegal armies (of right-wing paramilitaries as well as left-wing guerrillas) which profit from and protect the cocaine trade.

That was the logic of Plan Colombia, a scheme backed with $1.3 billion in American aid in 2000. Only now are its full effects starting to be felt: extra crop-dusting aircraft (to spray coca fields), and helicopters to protect them and to destroy drug-processing labs, are arriving. Since July 28th, they have sprayed 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of coca in Putumayo. That compares with just 5,000 hectares eradicated voluntarily.

Even before the latest spraying campaign, there were some signs that coca output in Colombia was declining. Last November, the latest annual survey by the UN Drug Control Programme found that the coca crop had fallen by 11%, to 145,000 hectares. American officials reported a slight fall in the purity of Colombian cocaine. But Klaus Nyholm, the UNDCP's man in Colombia, says he has “more than a hunch” that the productivity of the country's coca fields has risen over the past five years, meaning that more cocaine could be coming from fewer hectares.

Andres Pastrana, Mr Uribe's predecessor, was reluctant to authorise all-out spraying. He feared that this would prejudice abortive peace talks with the FARC, the main guerrilla group, which controls much of Putumayo and neighbouring Caqueta. And critics say that spraying damages human health and the environment—as well as wiping out adjacent food crops. Officials counter that glyphosate, the herbicide involved, is harmless to health, and that the coca industry itself does huge ecological damage. Under Mr Pastrana, only commercial coca plantations, of three hectares or more, rather than family farms were supposed to be sprayed. Now there have been reports that this restriction has been dropped.

Although some of his advisers are said to be nervous about driving more coca farmers into the ranks of the FARC, Mr Uribe insists that spraying is needed. “If we don't destroy drugs, they will destroy our democracy and ecology”, he says. On September 3rd, he issued a decree speeding up the procedure for confiscating drug traffickers' assets. He is also keen on shooting down drug planes. According to Francisco Santos, the vice-president, a score of clandestine flights each week carry drugs to Venezuela, returning with arms. Such aircraft were routinely intercepted, with CIA help, until an incident last year in which an American missionary and her baby were killed when their plane was shot down in Peru. American officials say they will soon authorise the resumption of the shoot-down programme.

As for providing coca farmers with alternatives, Mr Uribe says he supports “practical” projects, such as forestry. Few legal crops flourish in Putumayo, which is remote and has poor soils. Mr Uribe is due to travel to Europe this month to seek $300m in foreign aid to help 50,000 peasant families, two-thirds of them in Putumayo. But European governments, while criticising spraying, have not reached into their pockets to back the alternatives they claim to favour. Out of $113m pledged since 1996 to Plante, the Colombian agency for alternative development, $104m has come from the United States.

Opponents of spraying argue for a more patient approach. “You can spray a field in five minutes, but development takes more like five years,” says Mr Nyholm “When you spray, often the farmer replants coca, either on the same field or further into the forest.” Putumayo's governor, Ivan Guerrero, says that voluntary eradication, and Mr Pastrana's investment in roads and health posts in the area, led residents of his long-neglected department “to believe in the state again”. He hopes farmers will voluntarily rip up a further 5,000 hectares by the end of the year.

But under the new policy, officials hope to spray 121,000 hectares this year, up from 94,000 hectares last year—and faster than the rate of replanting, they claim. Whether that will hurt the FARC, and the other armed groups, more than it helps them, remains to be seen. And even if the Colombian coca crop falls significantly, all the signs are that Peru and Bolivia will take up the slack. Even if the Andean drug war has indeed entered a new phase, it is nowhere near over.